Sunlight
by Akuma Syrelis
Summary: Waking up to Memory.Waking up Alone.Standard Disclaimer: Harry Potter & co belong to J.K.Rawling. Original characters belong to me. Quotes within the text will be attributed to their authors to the best of the author's ability.


The light at dawn can be harsh. It is unrelenting in its mission to reveal the new day. The fact that it demands attention from its viewers is, perhaps, the worst of its qualities. It streams in windows and through the cracks in blinds, landing full burst upon the sleeping face, drawing one out of the oblivion of dreams into the reality of day. It is one of the crueler forces in the world, having neither judgment nor wisdom, simply the unrelenting speed of light forcing its way through all permeable barriers.

Draco opened his eyes, one at a time, and blinked groggily, wishing the light would go away and leave his aching head to further rest. He couldn't' remember ever feeling quite so hung over before ...

Memory is like sunlight. It intrudes when we would be better off sleeping. For a few seconds he was all right as the events of the previous night crept forward through his still dazed mind - then the weight hit him and he retched, clinging to the side of the bed as he heaved. There was no vomit; he had already emptied his stomach the night previous. But he could not stop his body from heaving and trembling, seeking to rid itself of all thought, of all consciousness once more.

He barely noticed when the others came in. Their quiet voices speaking urgently as strong, gentle hands lifted him back into bed. Someone patted his back comfortingly while someone else murmured a spell next to his ear. The desire to puke receded, leaving behind a strange feeling of weightlessness. They patted him down, prodding and checking, and, finally, covering him to the chin with blankets as they left the room.

Tears were falling down his face, he realized. Sparkling in the sunlight that would not stop touching ... that would not stop reminding him ... they fell down his cheeks and onto the crisply white sheets in small, halting falls of moisture. It had never occurred to him that he would end up here, in the sunlight, alone. "Alone." He whispered the word, tasting it, touching the bitterness of it with his tongue. "Dead." The second whispered word had all the flavor of char, and the sound of it flooded him, filling his soul.

"No ... No, you can't be dead," he moaned, fumbling his hand out of the sheet to cover his eyes as the sobs followed the word. They surged like angry tides, swallowing him and tossing him against the pain that had been growing even as he slept. The knowledge of that emptiness beside him and within him had not been comforted by the so-called "Dreamless Sleep." The wound gaped and burned inside of him as he wept. "Come back." He cried into the pillow, clutching it as one would cling to a lover, "Please don't leave me ..."

The sunlight warmed his back, caressed his skin through blankets and pajamas. Wounds he had forgotten warmed and burned in the careless light. He stiffened, pushing himself violently up and swung his legs off the bed, careening forward on marionette legs until he was pressed against the windowpane, full in the blazing light. "BRING HIM BACK TO ME!!!!!!!!!" he screamed, beating the pane with his fist until, no longer able to stand, he slid down the window and wall to the floor.

In his memory, bright with that awful, morning light, he could hear the sounds and taste the smoke. The darkness that had concealed the world was gone, and he could see everything with a clarity that was as much magic as it was sorrow. The array they had set up using the diagrams Hermione had drafted gleamed with preternatural light in the center of their circle. Snape stood to one side, cloaked from head to toe in black, his hands gripping the haft of a great sword that stood, point down, at the North Sigil. Hermione and Luna, both cloaked like Snape, held the East and the West with staffs made out of Rowan and Ash. Draco held the South with a sword the brother to Snape's while, in the center, stood Harry ...

He could not stop the screams when they came. His fists crashed into the wall until blood covered his knuckles, the voices of his caretakers came soon after, but he was caught within the memory of Harry's glowing eyes as they recited that damned spell! They tried to carry him into the bed, but he fought them, feeling the pain as his wounds broke open, and the screams tore through his throat like fire.

"Harry! Harry ... you idiot. You F#$(&G IDIOT!" His voice broke and he fell, never noticing that they caught him or that they were murmuring other spells. All he could see were those emerald eyes and that cocky little smile, too full of futility to be true, as their eyes met in the center of that spell.

"Shhh. Shhhh ... Draco," someone was whispering, "It's all right ... it's all right ... come on, Love ... let it go. Just for now ... you're pretty messed up, you know. You need to sleep ... Shhh. Shhh."

"But ...but ... Harry," He pressed into that voice, into the hand that stroked his hair, and found himself embraced against a hard chest, found that the hand in his hair trembled, too.

The spell, he remembered, had gone horribly wrong. Or, perhaps, he wondered, had it gone completely right? Harry's eyes. He could not forget their expression just before the circle had been linked. There was a flash of intense, burning light that had thrown all of those at the Cardinal Points out of their places and into the walls, or the pillars, he remembered. Only Harry, who had been dead-center when the spell was cast was still in his place. He had crept along the floor, not caring if he was bleeding, not caring that his head was a mass of agonizing pain. Harry was in front of him, caught in a vortex of mad, twisting light, his body contorting painfully this way and that as the power consumed him.

The power had consumed him as Draco watched. He could hear Hermione screaming now, he could hear Luna chanting wildly, and Snape was staggering toward the vortex like a drunken invalid, his ratty hair smacking his face as the air around them surged and flexed. Somewhere, he could hear his own voice, screaming Harry's name.

"I couldn't ... I couldn't move. I couldn't save him," he whispered raggedly into the circle of the arms that held him so tightly. "The magic was ... was ripping him apart, and I couldn't do anything! He didn't even scream. He couldn't! He couldn't! I saw his mouth open, but there was nothing! No sound ..!"

The sunlight around them lifted, changed, shifting as the minutes passed and he could not breathe, could not scream, could not weep. The horror grasped him in the cold of a Dementor's kiss and he could only lie there in those warm arms.

Harry was gone. Harry was gone. Harry was gone.

He had known all along. He had known, and he had let them do that to him.

Draco had not been able to save him. And Harry had known that, too.

"That idiot," He growled. "That f(&#g idiot."

He felt the other memories behind the horror: memories that had changed him and who he was. Memories of sunlight welcomed, embraces in warm shadows, secrets shared and secrets revealed: everything he did not want to remember shot through him like an arrow in his spirit and he cried out softly, almost inaudibly. The arms around him tightened.

"D-did ..." his voice caught, he coughed and pressed his face into the chest beneath his hands.

"Did what?" The deep voice rumbled through the chest beneath his face.

"Did the spell work?"  
A space that seemed to last an eternity stretched between question and answer. Draco closed his eyes, stopped his breathing. He wished he had never asked the question; but, if the spell had not worked - he bit his lip harshly, tasting blood.

The chest heaved and he heard the echo long before he understood the words. "Yes. The spell worked." Tears fell onto the top of his head, and he lifted his face to see Lupin, the gray hair falling to cover tear clouded eyes, nodding raggedly. "We won it all."

The morning light glistened and burned around them.

"It should be raining," Draco whispered, remembering green eyes on a day full of rain and the heat of a clinging embrace. "I never want to see the sun again."


End file.
